An iPhone could be driving your car within 10 years

If the research being carried out by Australian scientists is successful, your iPhone could be driving your car for you within a decade.

Dr Jun Jo and his team from Griffith University say that they are developing technology that will enable a smartphone to your drive your car, reports Sky News.

“When I get into the car I simply place my mobile phone in the dashboard, facing the camera out to the front,” explained Dr Jo. “All the sensors around the car will start communicating with my phone.”

Dr Jo says that his team will be road testing their prototype car within the next 12 months. The vehicle uses an onboard computer, radar system, and sensors, to communicate with the smartphone’s satellite navigation technology and camera to drive along the street.

Dr Jo believes that the way we use cars in the future will be very different to the way we use them now. “We believe cars will become shared properties rather than individual belongings,” he said.

“Sharing cars will reduce lots of expenditure and solve a lot of traffic congestion in the middle of cities,” Dr Jo continued. “My smartphone could reserve a car near my house and, then when I leave home, I place my mobile phone in the dashboard and my smartphone actually knows where to go and what is my preferred driving style. Then when I get out of the car the phone will fix payment for the time I spent in it and for the fuel consumed.”

It may take 10 years before an app can take complete control of a car, but we’re already seeing autonomy such as self-parking, crash avoidance and more in vehicles available to buy now.

Google’s self-driving car passed its driver’s license test in US in May, and according to statistics released last week, it is safer than human drivers.

Mercedes Benz has announced that it will integrate Apple’s Siri voice-assisted technology into its future cars, via a special app that will also translate an iPhone’s screen onto the in-car display, so you can listen to music, change radio stations or update your Facebook and Twitter status.

Ford has not ruled out the possibility of introducing Siri in its future cars, either, despite already having the SYNC feature, Ford’s own built-in-voice-activated technology for its vehicles.

Nuance, the company behind Siri, has also announced that it is making a Siri-like natural language command platform for vehicles, Dragon Drive.